New blasts, fire at nuke plant in disaster-hit Japan

Japan's nuclear crisis escalated today as two more blasts and a fire rocked a quake-stricken atomic power plant, sending radiation up to dangerous levels.

Radiation around the Fukushima No.1 plant on the eastern coast had "risen considerably", Prime Minister Naoto Kan said, and his chief spokesman announced the level was now high enough to endanger human health.

In Tokyo, some 250 kilometres to the southwest, authorities also said that higher than normal radiation levels had been detected in the capital, the world's biggest urban area, but not at harmful levels.

Kan warned people living up to 10 kilometres beyond a 20 km exclusion zone around the nuclear plant to stay indoors.

The fire, which was later reportedly extinguished, was burning in the plant's number-four reactor, he said, meaning that four out of six reactors at the facility are now in trouble.

As well as the atomic emergency, Japan is struggling to cope with the enormity of the damage from Friday's record-breaking quake and the tsunami which raced across vast tracts of its northeast, destroying all before it.

The official death toll has risen to 2,414, police said today, but officials say at least 10,000 are likely to have perished.

The crisis at the ageing Fukushima plant has escalated daily after Friday's quake and tsunami which knocked out cooling systems.

On Saturday an explosion blew apart the building surrounding the plant's number-one reactor. On Monday, a blast hit the number-three reactor, injuring 11 people and sending plumes of smoke billowing into the sky.

Early today a blast hit the number-two reactor. That was followed shortly after by a hydrogen explosion which started a fire at the number-four reactor.

Chief government spokesman Yukio Edano said radioactive substances were leaked along with the hydrogen.

"What we most fear is a radiation leak from the nuclear plant," Kaoru Hashimoto, 36, a housewife living in Fukushima city 80 kilometres northwest of the stricken plant, told AFP by phone.

"Not much confirmed information is coming to us, so we are in trouble about how to cope with the situation."

Hashimoto said supermarkets are open but shelves are completely empty. "Many children are sick in this cold weather but pharmacies are closed. Emergency relief goods have not reached evacuation centres in the city.

"I'm wondering how long we can manage with the food we have in stock. Everyone is anxious and wants to get out of town. But there is no more petrol. We are afraid of using a car as we may run out of petrol."